I have a thought that she’s my mother through a time machine, twenty years erased, back at the start of things when a future that would warrant coverage in People was not only possible, but inevitable. My parents’ whole relationship was based on her innate hunger for status elevating his garage band singing to that of a neo-Bruce-Springsteen quality. The fantasy worked for the both of them.
Unfortunately, the band stayed in the garage, and all they got as a door prize for their unrealized pipe dreams was me.
I move forward, passing through the mostly empty textbook section of the store. In the rear, I find the grocery/drugstore part, with toiletries, basic first aid medications, and rudimentary beauty products shelved next to bars of candy, bags of chips, and boxes of cereal. There’s a limited choice and limited supply of what’s offered, but they do a brisk business in calorie-dense, nonnutritious foods as well as no-reasonable-alternative makeup and hairstyling products.
I pause in front of the medicines because the bottles of over-the-counter pain relievers capture my attention. In the end, I keep going to my planned destination and I’m relieved I was able to move along. Aspirin and Tylenol are like sharp objects to me. They’re the steak knives of pharmaceuticals, easy to get a hold of and innocuous in the hands of most. To me, they are conduits for bad things, and I don’t trust the morbid sizzle I get whenever I’m near them.
I halt at the laundry section. Sure enough, I find three one-liter bottles of Clorox, the thinner, bikini-ready versions of the big fat middle-aged bottles my mother buys for herself. I briefly revisit the idea of payback, and consider buying a bottle of retaliation brand bleach. But I know I’ll never follow through on the flare of aggression, and I certainly won’t ever need Clorox for my own wardrobe, even with Greta having given me a head start in the lightening department.
Disappointed by my cowardice, I search for what I came for. I’m not surprised that I’m unable to find clothing dye in what I assume is the only section in which it would be stocked.
On my way to the exit, I stop in front of the clerk to make sure I haven’t missed something. It’s hot outside, and I’d like to save myself the walk into town, if I can. She informs me, without looking up from an article on Ann Jillian’s miracle baby, that I have to go to CVS for that kind of stuff. She doesn’t acknowledge my thank-you or my departure.
Back out on the sidewalk, I frown at the sweltering temperature and think about putting off the trip. It’s two miles each way and there are those storms coming. I’m running out of clean clothes, however, and I refuse to tip my hand that I discovered the damage. I start walking. For once, I will pull up my long sleeves, but not until after I step off of the Ambrose acreage.
Down at the campus’s far edge, a construction project has just been started, and as I close in on the cellar hole of what will clearly be the school’s biggest building, I feel a kinship with the workmen. They’re all in heavy clothes just like I am, and they look hot in the sun, too.
A fancy sign mounted in front of the site surprises me.
THE STROTSBERRY ATHLETIC CENTER.
Funny, Strots has never mentioned this. And as I’ve had my gym requirement waived because of the lithium, I’ve never been close to the site.
For the first time, I wonder just exactly how much money my roommate’s family has. She’s so down-to-earth, but even Greta doesn’t have a Stanhope Hall to brag about.
Maybe there’s a level of wealth even higher up than Greta’s, and doesn’t that make me smile a little.
As I pass through Ambrose’s gates, I shove my sleeves up and expose the scars that mark my wrists. For the longest time, they were red and angry, welts left from the lashes of my slashes and the tangle of stitches I got at the ER. They’ve faded a lot since then, but I know them by heart, and my obsession with how noticeable they are makes me feel like they are neon bright.
Just as I step onto the sidewalk that runs into town, one of the school’s orange buses goes by. I wave as I recognize Strots in the lineup of half-cocked windows, and I see that she lifts her hand to me in response. The chanting of the girls and the sweet fumes of the diesel exhaust and the rumble of the engine all fade at the same rate as the team and their transport disappear down the road, warriors on the way to the field hockey front lines.
Fare thee well, fair Athenas, I think.
The town of Greensboro Falls isn’t much more than a main street, a gas station, and a public library that’s bigger than the police station that sits next to it. A ring of residential houses lollygags around the anemic suburban pimple, the tired one-and two-stories small and, in many cases, lacking garages. As I lumber by them in the blazing warmth, I reflect that my mother and I live in the same kind of place, something that’s just a roof and walls to keep out the cold in the winter and the elements always.
Over my shoulder, thunder rolls through the sky. I quicken my steps and lift the hair off the sweaty nape of my neck. Even though it’s cloudy, I feel as though the sun is seeking me out through the churning gray blanket that separates us. I find myself wondering whether, if I had a wardrobe similar in color to Greta’s, she’d have left my washer’s load alone as a chromatic courtesy. It’s an inane hypothetical. Besides, bright colors make me nervous, and somehow I doubt that sartorial solidarity would have saved me.
There are two traffic lights on the main drag, one as you come into the ten-block stretch of stores and businesses, and one as you leave it. Ten blocks seems like a lot, but it’s not when you consider there’s no sprawl of commerce behind the storefronts, no purchasing penetration past the parking lots that skirt the back of each establishment. There are two lawyers’ offices, three restaurants, a dental practice, a doctor, a movie theater with only two screens, a record store, and an H&R Block for taxes. The rest are mom-and-pop peddlers offering collections of earthy-crunchy clothes, handmade gifts, and local books, photography, and hobbyist art. There’s only one national mainstay in the midst of all the town-specific, and as this CVS comes into view around the subtle curve of the street, it is a televangelist among vicars.
Inside its consumer value interior, the air smells like strawberries and wax paper, soft Muzak is piped in from somewhere, and fluorescent lights rain false sun on the thousands of products available for purchase. I wonder, if someone steals something, whether the two middle-aged, uniformed women stationed behind the mile-long candy display are rugged enough to swing their legs over their counters and chase a shoplifter down the sidewalk. Probably not. Maybe they have panic buttons to call the police, which are stationed, along with the town library, right behind the store, although it seems unlikely the cashiers have been trained for such misdemeanor emergencies. Greensboro Falls seems like the kind of town where everyone knows everybody else, and because of this, you have to be honest whether you want to be or not.
Then again, bad people travel, don’t they.
The cashiers watch me as I descend on the household products aisle, and I bet they’re looking to see if I am a shoplifter with my big-pocketed black pants and my lowered head. If I were to tell them the reason that I’m here, would they be more kindly disposed to my presence?
I find the shelves with laundry supplies in the back. They’re by the pharmacy section, and a white-coated man looks up from behind an elevated counter. He does a double take and then resumes counting pills. Behind him, the drugs that can be given only upon doctors’ orders are like soldiers ready to be called to the front lines of battles, the labels-out lineups of opaque, mostly white bottles too far away for me to read their names. This is where I will have to go for my refills, and I know he’s going to look at me and not be surprised by what he must count out for me.